The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (25 page)

25
. Thomas Laqueur,
Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 34–35.

26
. Michel Foucault,
The History of Sexuality
, vol. 1, An
Introduction
(New York: Random House, 1978), 104.

27
. Jean-Michel Oughourlian,
The Puppet of Desire: The Psychology of Hysteria, Possession and Hypnosis
, trans. Eugene Webb (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991), 145; on neurasthenia see John S. Haller, “Neurasthenia: The Medical Profession and the ‘New Woman’ of the Late Nineteenth Century,”
New York State Journal of Medicine
71 (February 15, 1971): 474.

28
. Edward Haller Shorter, “Paralysis: The Rise and Fall of a ‘Hysterical’ Symptom,”
Journal of Social History
19, no. 4 (1986): 549–82.

29
. Gall,
Anatomie et physiologie du système nerveux
, 85–164, and A. F. A. King, “Hysteria,”
American Journal of Obstetrics
24, no. 5 (1891): 513–32.

30
. There is, however, at least one case of such an injury to a hysteric at the Salpêtrière. See Christopher G. Goetz, Michel Bonduelle, and Toby Gelfand,
Charcot: Constructing Neurology
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 191.

31
. Joan Jacobs Brumberg,
Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 67–70, 107, 115–20, 143.

32
. Roberta Satow, “Where Has All the Hysteria Gone?”
Psychoanalytic Review
66 (1979–80): 463–73. Martha Noel Evans argues that the disease survives, at least in France, in the form of disorders now called spasmophilia and anorexia, formerly diagnosed as hysteria. See Evans,
Fits and Starts: A Genealogy of Hysteria in Modern France
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 223–42.

33
. Owsei Temkin,
Galenism; Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973).

34
. Paré,
Workes
, 634, 945.

35
. As in Robert L. Dickinson and Henry H. Pierson, “The Average Sex Life of American Women,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
85 (1925): 1113–17; see also Harland William Long,
Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living: Some Things That All Sane People Ought to Know about Sex Nature and Sex Functioning
(New York: Eugenics, 1937), 125–27.

36
. Among those who did, the most notable are Highmore,
De Passione Hysterica
, 76–78, and Tripier,
Leçons cliniques
, 350–51. Audrey Eccles discusses some
other forthright authors in
Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England
(London: Croom Helm, 1982), 79–82, as do Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset in
Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages
, trans. Matthew Adamson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 170.

37
. Two of many examples are William Acton [1813–75],
The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs in Childhood, Youth, Adult Age and Advanced Life, Considered in Their Physiological, Social, and Moral Relations
(Philadelphia: Blakiston, 1865), 133, and Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis: A Medicoforensic Study
(1886; reprint New York: G. P. Putman’s Sons, 1965), 33, 55, 248. An overview of this literature appears in Carl N. Degler, “What Ought to Be and What Was,”
American Historical Review
79 (1974): 1467–90.

38
. Peter Gay,
The Education of the Senses
, vol. 1 of The
Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 103, 264, 478–82.

39
. Laqueur, Making
Sex
, 233. “Frigidity” in men is also defined in the context of coitus. See Robert Knight, “Functional Disturbances in the Sexual Life of Men: Frigidity and Related Disorders,”
Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic
7, no. 1 (1943): 25–35-

40
. Editorial in
Lancet
, 1869, quoted in Lynda Nead,
Myths of Sexuality: Representations of
Women
in Victorian Britain
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988): 21; C. Bigelow,
Sexual Pathology: A Practical and Popular Review of the Principal Diseases of the Reproductive Organs
(Chicago: Ottaway and Colbert, 1875), 36, 78, 109; and William Goodell,
Lessons in Gynecology
, 3d ed. (Philadelphia: Davis, 1890), 541, 565–70.

41
. It has been observed that this is a fundamental difficulty with the Masters and Johnson research results. William H. Masters,
Human Sexual Response
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1966). Bergler and Kroger, in
Kinsey’s Myth of Female Sexuality
, 48, claim that there is no scientific or statistical objection to declaring 80 to 90 percent of the female population abnormal.

42
. For example, Mary Gove Nichols,
Experience in Water-Cure
(New York: Fowlers and Wells, 1850), 10–68; Nichols,
Lectures to Women on Anatomy and Physiology
(New York: Harper, 1846), 244–48; and Wilhelm Griesinger, Mental
Pathology and Therapeutics
, trans. C. Lockhart Robinson and James Rutherford (London: New Sydenham Society, 1867), 202.

43
. Roger Blake,
Sex Gadgets
(Cleveland: Century, 1968), 33–46, and Akbar Del Piombo,
The Erotic Tool
(New York: Olympia Press, 1971), 38–39.

44
. See, for example, the views of female orgasm in Howard S. Levy and Akira Ishihara,
The Tao of Sex: The “Essence of Medical Prescriptions (Ishimpo),”
3d ed. rev. (Lower Lake, Calif.: Integral, 1989), a translation of a tenth-century work by Tamba Yasuyori, a Chinese physician who lived in Japan; and Al-Sayed Haroun ibn Hussein Al-Makhzoumi [fl.
A.D.
1152?],
The Fountains of Pleasure
, trans. Hatem El-Khalidi (New York: Dorset Press, 1970), 65–76.

45
. American Psychiatric Association,
Mental Disorders Diagnostic Manual
(Washington, D.C.: APA, 1952).

46
. Carol Tavris and Carole Wade,
The Longest War: Sex Differences in Perspective
, 2d ed. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 92–96.

47
. Joseph Mortimer Granville,
Nerve-Vibration and Excitation as
Agents
in the Treatment of Functional Disorders and Organic Disease
(London: J. and A. Churchill, 1883). See also the Weiss model of Mortimer Granville’s design at the Bakken Library and Museum of Electricity in Life, Minneapolis, accession number 82.100. Trade catalog sources include Wappler Electric Manufacturing Company,
Wappler Cautery and Light Apparatus and Accessories
, 2d ed. (New York: Wappler Electric, 1914); Sam J. Gorman,
Electro-therapeutic Apparatus
, iothed. (Chicago: Sam J. Gorman, 1912); and Manhattan Electrical Supply Company,
Catalogue Twenty-six: Something Electrical for Everybody
(New York: MESCO, n.d.).

48
. Some works that clarify these distinctions are Paul Tabori,
The Humor and Technology of Sex
(New York: Julian Press, 1969), 444; Helen Singer Kaplan, “The Vibrator: A Misunderstood Machine,”
Redbook
, May 1984, 34; Mimi Swartz, “For the Woman Who Has Almost Everything,”
Esquire
, July 1980, 56–63; “The Great Playboy Sex-Aids Road Test,”
Playboy
25, no. 3 (1978): 135–37, 208–9; and Joani Blank,
Good Vibrations
(Burlingame, Calif.: Down There Press, 1989), 6–25.

49
. Zacuto,
Praxis Medica Admiranda
, 265–66.

50
. Samuel Monell, A
System of Instruction in X-Ray Methods and Medical Uses of Light, Hot Air, Vibration and High Frequency Currents
(New York: E. R. Penton, 1903), 591–99.

51
. Hieronymus Eusebius [Saint Jerome],
Select Letters of Saint Jerome
, trans. F. A. Wright (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933), letters 45.5, 107.8, 11, 117.6.

52
. See, for examples, Emmet Murphy,
Great Bordellos of the World
(London: Quartet Books, 1983), 55, 69. On masturbation with water, see Eugene Halpert, “On a Particular Form of Masturbation in Women: Masturbation with Water,”
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
21 (1973): 526, and J. Aphrodite [pseud.],
To Turn You On: Thirty-nine Sex Fantasies for Women
(Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1975), 83–91.

53
. Barry Cunliffe, “The Roman Baths at Bath: The Excavations, 1969–1975,”
Britannia
7 (1976): 1–32.

54
. Tobias Smollett, An
Essay on the External Use of Water
, ed. Claude E. Jones (London, 1752; reprint Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1935), 55–78.

55
. Such as those in Tompkins and Chemung Counties, New York, in the mid-nineteenth century. Samuel A. Cloyes,
The Healer: The Story of Dr. Samantha S. Nivison and Dryden Springs
, 1820–1915 (Ithaca, N.Y.: DeWitt Historical Society of Tompkins County, 1969), and “Medical Milestones,”
Chemung Historical Journal
(Elmira, N.Y.) 32, no. 2 (1986): 3617–23. The
Water Cure Journal
cites many examples of women owners, co-owners, and resident physicians.

56
. Henri Scoutetten,
De l’eau, ou De l’hydrotherapie
(Paris: P. Bertrand, 1843), 239–41.

57
. Herbert Ant and Walter S. McClellan, “Physical Equipment for Administration of Health Resort Treatment,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
123 (November 13, 1943): 69–99.

58
. For examples, see Good Health Publishing Company,
Twentieth Century Therapeutic Appliances
(Battle Creek, Mich.: Good Health, 1909), and Simon Baruch,
The Principles and Practice of Hydrotherapy: A Guide to the Application of Water in Disease
(New York: William Wood, 1897).

59
. For examples of fees, see Charles B. Thorne, “The Watering Spas of Middle Tennessee,”
Tennessee History Quarterly
29, no. 4 (1970–71): 321–59, and J. A. Irwin,
Hydrotherapy at Saratoga
(New York: Casell, 1892). Other hydrotherapeutic spas are described in Edward C. Atwater and Lawrence A. Kohn, “Rochester and the Water Cure,”
Rochester History
32 (1970): 1–24; John Bell [1796–1872],
On Baths and Mineral Waters
(Philadelphia: H. H. Porter, 1831); Augustus P. Biegler,
The Rochester Lake View Water-Cure Institution
(Rochester, N.Y., 1851); Carl Bridenbaugh, “Baths and Watering Places of Colonial America,”
William and Mary Quarterly
3 (1946): 151–81; Edward Bulwer-Lytton,
Confessions of a Water-Patient
, 3d ed. (London: H. Baillière, 1847); Susan Evelyn Cayleff, “Wash and Be Healed: The Nineteenth-Century Water-Cure Movement, 1840–1900. Simple Medicine and Women’s Retreat” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1983); Jane B. Donegan,
Hydropathic Highway to Health: Women and
Water-Cure in Antebellum America
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986); and Edward W. Fitch,
Mineral Waters of the United States and American Spas
(Philadelphia: Lea and Feibiger, 1927).

60
. Alfred Levertin,
Dr. G. Zander’s Medico-mechanical Gymnastics: Its Method, Importance and Applications
(Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt, 1893).

61
. “All physicians agree that every family should have an Electric Battery in their house,” advertisement by United States Battery Agency (Brooklyn, N.Y.),
Dorcas Magazine
7 (September 15, 1889). Edward Trevert Bubier,
Electro-therapeutic Handbook
(New York: Manhattan Electrical Supply Company, 1900), 86; and N. A. Cambridge, “Electrical Apparatus Used in Medicine before 1900,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine
70, no. 9 (1977): 635–41.

62
. Taylor wrote voluminously and invented tirelessly. His major works include
Paralysis and Other Affections of the Nerves: Their Cure by Transmitted Energy and Special Movements
(New York: American Book Exchange, 1880);
Massage
(New York: Fowler and Wells, 1884);
Diseases of Women
(Philadelphia: G. McClean, 1871);
Health for Women
(New York: John B. Alden, 1883);
Health for Women: Showing the Causes of Feebleness and the Local Diseases Resulting Therefrom, with Full Directions for Self-Treatment
, 12th ed. (New York: Health Culture, 1923); “March 21, 1875. Improvement in medical rubbing apparatus,” U.S. Patent 175, 202, application filed May 17, 1875;
Mechanical Aids in the Treatment of Chronic Forms of Disease
(New York: Rodgers, 1893);
Pelvic and Hernial Therapeutics
(New York: J. B. Alden, 1885); and “Movement Cure,” U.S. Patent 263, 625, application filed June 19, 1882.
Figure 3
is from
Pelvic and Hernial Therapeutics
.